What’s happened with Happ? Or has nothing really changed?

GRAND PRAIRIE — There isn’t much for which we’re taking credit from the spring prediction season. That pick of the Astros only to be one game worse than last year? Not looking so good.

But last night’s starter, J.A. Happ, falls into the “don’t say you weren’t warned” category.

Happ built his 3.75 ERA with the Astros last year on the foundation of a 4.4 BB/9 rate and a 7.6 K/9 rate and what appears from record and ERA (3-9, 5.33) to be a severe regression year features 4.4 BB/9 and 7.5 K/9, almost identical.

With a similar home run rate, the big difference comes in the batting average and specifically batting average on balls in play.

It can be said statistically that Happ got some good fortune last year, holding opponents to a .270 batting average on balls in play last year – league average always hovers around .300. This year, that figure over which pitchers have very little control relative to walks and strikeouts, is back in line with the league average at .303.

So what exactly has changed for Happ? (Stats using Houston only, taken from Baseball-Reference.com)

Statistic

2010

2011

Record

5-4

3-9

ERA

3.75

5.33

BB/9

4.4

4.4

K/9

7.6

7.5

HR/9

0.9

1.1

Opp. BA

.230

.265

Line drive%

20%

23%

First pitch strikes

57%

54%

It was the lack of first-pitch strikes that Happ was lamenting Monday night when he allowed seven runs on eight hits while recording just eight outs.

That’s been a bit of a decline this year with the league average at 59 percent. But there is really nothing that jumps out as to what has cratered for Happ this year to give him the third-highest ERA among 59 qualified National League starters.

Adding on from an early comment from “bopert,” nobody’s chasing his balls out of the zone. That’s trackable in the statistics too. According to Fangraphs, opponents are only swinging at 24 percent of his balls out of the zone last year compared to 30 percent in his Astros tenure last year. It hasn’t changed his walk rate, but it may be forcing him back into the zone. Part of it is his misses, and part is the scouting reports getting around on a guy who does not pound the zone consistently.

Overall, he was operating last year at a tremendous level of batting average against that was difficult to sustain, and for the most senior of the Roy Oswalt threesome, this year might have just been coming.